''Occupy a Desk''Is Atlas About to Shrug?Perspective on the News
Monday, November 21, 2011Jack Kinsella - Omega Letter Editor

It was only a matter of time. Frustrated by the legions of freeloaders demanding that other people pay for their stuff, a group of successful Wall Street businessmen organized themselves for a counter-protest.

Carrying signs with slogans like, "Occupy a Desk" and "Get a Job" about fifty of them took up positions between the OWS protesters and their places of business that the assorted moochers, looters, vagrants, drug addicts, sex offenders and those brainwashed by their college professors were planning to storm.

As one of the organizers of the counter demonstration, a businessman named John Tabacco of locatestock.com explained to reporters;

"Why are we working hard so a bunch of bums can lay in the park and sleep all day and get free meals. At some point you've got to draw a line in the sand and today was a start."

Why, indeed? The entire scenario is reminiscent of a fifty-four year-old book written by atheist and noted defender of capitalism, Ayn Rand. Her book, Atlas Shrugged was first published in 1957 and has never gone out of print since.

Indeed, according to the Ayn Rand Institute, sales of the book have only gone up over the years, which is quite an accomplishment, given its length. I checked my copy and it runs 1108 pages in small print.

Fifty-four years after it was published, it still ranks higher than, say, President Obama's magnum opus, "Dreams From My Father". (Atlas Shrugged ranks 2041 compared to Obama's 15,014).

In Atlas Shrugged, all countries outside the US have become – or are becoming throughout the course of the novel – "People's States", which survive mainly through aid given by the United States.

The US regime in power in "Atlas Shrugged" decries socialism even as it practices it. It doesn't resort to outright nationalization of banks and industry -- instead it so heavily controls and regulates industry that it accomplishes the same thing.

Ayn Rand separates American society into different classes, moochers and looters on one side, with inventors, workers and 'the rich' on the other.

Is any of this starting to sound familiar to you? (To me, it sounds like an analysis of yesterday's news.)

The looters are those who confiscate others' earnings "at the point of a gun" —often because they are government officials, and thus their demands are backed by the threat of force.

The moochers are the ones who demand the earnings of others because they claim to be needy. Even as they beg, they curse the rich and hate them for their wealth.

Although the moochers seem benign at first glance, they are portrayed as more destructive than the looters—they destroy the productive through guilt and often motivate the "lawful" looting performed by governments.

The government itself demonizes the rich and the productive and coddles the moochers and looters because they form the base of their political support.

It's just too weird, isn't it? The guys carrying the "Occupy a Desk" signs put me in mind of John Galt. Who is John Galt?

The question, "Who is John Galt?" is asked throughout the novel by various characters but the answer doesn't come until near the end.

John Galt is an inventor and industrialist who finally had enough of income redistribution and declares, "Enough!"

He leads a quiet revolution in which all the inventors and producers decide to go on strike.

Each man eventually comes to the conclusion that society hampers him with unnecessary, burdensome and expensive regulations and undervalues his role in society.

In Rand's world, government confiscation of profits, justified by demonizing the profit-makers and their reputations results in the producers and inventors quietly disappearing.

The idea was to starve the socialistic government of tax revenues that it was taking from the producers, thus hurrying along its collapse.

Later, we learn that they all joined John Galt in a place called "Galt's Gulch" somewhere in Colorado.

Sigh. That was fifty-four years ago. Today, there is no place to hide from either the moochers or the looters. Because today, they are the government.

I was fascinated to read a Reuters "insight" story that claimed that it is WALL STREET that "just doesn't get it" and not the protestors, who couldn't be a better fit to the Ayn Rand storyline than if they had read the book and planned accordingly.

The Reuters "insight" piece reads as if it were part of Ayn Rand's fictional futureworld:

Some are saying it may be time for the government which has bailed out the banking system to help millions of struggling homeowners.

One of those is former top Pacific Investment Management Co executive Paul McCulley, best known for his analysis on central banks and monetary policy when he worked at the world's biggest bond fund. McCulley, who retired a year ago from Newport Beach, California-based PIMCO to become a consultant with a public policy firm, enjoys the wealth he accumulated in his old role. He lives in a house by the water where he docks his two boats. But he says Wall Street went too far.

"Our society was ripe for a convulsion about social justice, and Occupy Wall Street was the catalyst for that," says McCulley. "New York can be very insular. It is not the real world and neither is Newport Beach."

Social justice is a code phrase used to legitimize moochers and looters while demonizing the producers, code-named, "the rich" or the "1%". The battle lines have been constructed in such a way that anyone not on the side of the moochers and looters are automatically condemned as defenders of Wall Street bankers.

To the moochers and looters of this world, there are but two sides and if you aren't on one, you are on the other. They cannot conceive of the possibility that there are folks who aren't on either side.

Not everybody is greedy and not everybody is covetous. I don't care what somebody else earns.

There is no insight that can justify giant herds of moochers and looters coming together for the express purpose of disrupting the lives of ordinary working people, which is what yesterday's "Day of Action" was designed to do.

The most amusing thing about the OWS movement is the utter mindlessness of it. They don't know what they want, they only know they want it now and they want somebody else to pay for it.

They expect the Democrats to come through for them again. The cities with the highest unemployment and highest crime rates are the cities that have been under Democrat control the longest.

The Republicans control one-half of one-third of government; the Senate, the judiciary and the Executive are under Democrat control, and the longer they are in charge, the worse things get.

Watching the looters and the moochers blocking traffic, threatening people, and even chasing little kids put me in mind of the perilous times the Apostle Paul warned of.

Indeed, as I watched the news footage, I was able to pick out examples from the crowd that provided supporting visuals for each of Paul's observed characteristics.

"This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come," (2 Timothy 3:1)

If you were watching the crowds swarming innocent workers in the streets yesterday, (and especially if you were one of them), then the perilous times part seems pretty self-evident.

And if you were listening to the some of the interviews, they brought the rest of the passage to life:

"For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God . . ." (2 Timothy 3:2-4)

So, watching the news of the day brings two different works of literature to life. Atlas Shrugged, with its looters, moochers and producers . . . and the Bible's description of perilous times in the last days.

And that's not all.

"Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived." (2 Timothy 3:12-13)

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